11 October 2006

so yesterday thomas and i went for a stroll from our house to bercy park over a new pedestration bridge named the Simone DeBeauvoir that spans the seine between the national library near us on the left bank and the park and stadium and cinémathèque on the right bank.

they just finished the bridge, and it looked really nice. i feel like bridges in paris (of which there are a shit ton) are an art--none of them look the same as the others.as we were approaching the bridge, i made some comment about how it looked like shit for a long time (which is true; they had to rip up all these sidewalks and there was shit everywhere). for a quick vocab break:

so basically, i've been pronounced a true parisian. it's not the first time that i've heard it. when i questioned thomas about what exactly makes me a parisian, he offered this list:

threatening old ladies on the bus

getting into yelling matches with people on the street

complaining about how the government takes forever to get shit done and how it looks like crap while they're doing it

bitching about tourists

being a snob about bread.

i've also been told however that i'm so american. these are the corresponding circumstances:

i moan about the bugs coming in the windows because windows in france don't have screens. apparently screens should make you feel as though you've been emprisoned. i disagree. i like laying down in bed and not getting cozy with six or eight-legged friends. diva, on the other hand, is fine with it. she loves her new toys.

i cut the mold off my cheese. this is, by all appearances, tantamount to cheese rape.

i drink too much water. by french standards, proper hydration consists of perhaps a glass a day.

so there ya go. i have been thoroughly bastardized. so, in continued preparation for my imminent departure, and celebration of my bastardization, this post is the anti-tourist post. i recently took issue with the Amélie paris that tourists love, so i wanted to be more explicit about the places i love here. most of these pictures were taken by thomas and manipulated by me.

this is a trainyard, taken from an overpass in the 12th arrondissement near vincennes :

from nearby the overpass, there is a beautiful graffitti-filled tunnel:a lot of the 13th arrondissement where thomas and i live is a weird mixture of things. the buildings don't match and are in tons of different styles, and there are whole sections that don't seem at all like paris or a city for that matter. this is another train:

and this is deserted traintracks. in the middle of paris, but who would know? :i love the cute street cleaner trucks. it has to do in part with my love for bright kelly green and the garbage men's kelly green jumpsuits, as well as the fact that from this perspective, the cleaner truck looks like an insect (i like them when they're not all up in my house) :dog poo. dog poo everywhere. there are signs all over that say j'aime mon quartier je ramasse ("i love my neighborhood so i pick up after my dog"), and all i can deduce from this is [a] that everyone hates their neighborhood, and [b] that man is sodomizing his dog :this is a recycling plant nearby. there's always smoke coming out, but apparently it's not pollution. that's the official line at least. it's a byproduct of making gâteaux de filtration, or filtration cakes. that is the actual term: graffitti on a squat nearby :and my favorite picture of all (taken by tyco and donna while they were here visiting), can be found in pigalle, the sex district :***j'aime paris. et paris m'aime aussi.